Putting a creative spin on teacher training and then outsourcing it to corporations
New York and up to 25 other states are moving toward changing the way they grant licenses to teachers. They plan to de-emphasize tests and written essays in favor of a more demanding approach that requires teachers-in-training to prove themselves through lesson plans, homework assignments and videotaped instruction sessions. In other words, they want to make sure that teachers can actually teach, that they have the ability to lead classrooms and handle students of differing abilities and needs, often amid limited resources.
The model for evaluating educators, known as Teacher Performance Assessment, was designed by Stanford University, with input from more than 600 educators, including university professors, across the country. Here’s how it will work: a teacher’s daily lesson plans, handouts and assignments will be reviewed, in addition to their logs about what works, what does not and why. Videos of student teachers will be scrutinized for moments when critical topics are discussed. Teachers will also be judged on their ability to deepen reasoning and problem-solving skills, to gauge how students are learning and to coax their class to cooperate in tackling learning challenges.
OK, so far so good. It makes sense that passing a written test in no way guarantees that a student can actually teach.
But here comes the problem: the new system will require teachers to electronically submit their work, including the videos, for grading by trained evaluators who have been recruited by the education company Pearson. Why on earth is a giant for-profit company like Pearson involved in the evaluation of teachers?
Many teachers are up-in-arms about the idea of outsourcing teacher evaluation, as The New York Times reports:
At the University of Massachusetts, 67 of the 68 students in a program for future middle and high school teachers refused to submit two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching, as well as a 40-page take-home test. The students said that evaluators chosen by Pearson were not qualified to judge their abilities, and should not be allowed to do so over their own professors.
Textbook publishers, testing companies and yes, Pearson Education, are already making a fat profit off the backs of educators. Let’s keep Pearson out of the evaluation of teachers.
![In bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, we first learn that hooks was bored and frustrated in her undergraduate and graduate classes, and thus as teacher is wholly invested in the notion of excitement in the classroom. For hooks, “to enter classroom settings…with the will to share the desire to encourage excitement, was to transgress” (7). Thus, hooks sees generating excitement, in other words, making learning FUN!, as a pedagogical strategy that encourages critical thinking, that can empower students, and that might transgress traditionally accepted epistemologies that preclude students (and teachers) from completely engaging in the learning process. With this move to encourage excitement in the classroom, to value everyone’s voice, and to build community in the classroom, hooks points us toward the main focus of this text, her experiences with engaged pedagogy. For hooks, engaged pedagogy is “progressive, holistic,” and unlike critical or feminist pedagogies, “emphasizes well-being” (15). Engaged pedagogy also “recognize[s] each classroom as different, that strategies must constantly be changed, invented, reconceptualized to address each new teaching experience” (10). Finally, hooks insists that engaged pedagogy (and her practice of it) has led her to “education as the practice of freedom” (11), or the belief that classrooms can transcend and transgress traditional classroom, race, class, gender, sexual, institutional, structural, and national borders. via http://www.samanthablackmon.net/courses/sp11/Engl680M/node/69](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6kah1L6d61qgegu7o1_500.jpg)
In bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, we first learn that hooks was bored and frustrated in her undergraduate and graduate classes, and thus as teacher is wholly invested in the notion of excitement in the classroom. For hooks, “to enter classroom settings…with the will to share the desire to encourage excitement, was to transgress” (7). Thus, hooks sees generating excitement, in other words, making learning FUN!, as a pedagogical strategy that encourages critical thinking, that can empower students, and that might transgress traditionally accepted epistemologies that preclude students (and teachers) from completely engaging in the learning process. With this move to encourage excitement in the classroom, to value everyone’s voice, and to build community in the classroom, hooks points us toward the main focus of this text, her experiences with engaged pedagogy. For hooks, engaged pedagogy is “progressive, holistic,” and unlike critical or feminist pedagogies, “emphasizes well-being” (15). Engaged pedagogy also “recognize[s] each classroom as different, that strategies must constantly be changed, invented, reconceptualized to address each new teaching experience” (10). Finally, hooks insists that engaged pedagogy (and her practice of it) has led her to “education as the practice of freedom” (11), or the belief that classrooms can transcend and transgress traditional classroom, race, class, gender, sexual, institutional, structural, and national borders. via http://www.samanthablackmon.net/courses/sp11/Engl680M/node/69
Teacher Plunges Herself into Mercy Mission for Animals of Rural Thailand
Every great feat begins with that first step. No matter what the human achievement or endeavor, it always begins with that one impetus, that drive to achieve something that’s bigger than ourselves. For Baan Unrak Animal Sanctuary founder Gemma Ashford, it all originated from an encounter with a little puppy named Tigerlilly.
Back in 2007 Gemma went to Sangklaburi, situated near the Burmese border in rural Thailand, to work as a teacher at the local children’s orphanage.
‘Tigerlilly was one of a family of five I fed regularly on the street,” Gemma said. “One morning I came across her lying at the side of the road. This tiny little girl was so emaciated, weak and she was struggling to stand.’”
Upon taking her to the vets, she was diagnosed with Canine Distemper – a condition that is lethal to all but 2% of puppies that catch it. Nonetheless, despite all the odds, round-the-clock care and being carried around everywhere in Gemma’s camera bag, Tigerlilly recovered wonderfully – casting doubt on her original diagnosis. She became Gemma’s first patient, her first success and the first resident at the now established Baan Unrak Animal Sanctuary in Sangklaburi.
The sanctuary currently houses 50 dogs, with this number fluctuating constantly as more cases are brought in every day. It’s not only canines that receive treatment; in the past we’ve looked after cats, rabbits, goats and recently a lesser bamboo rat. Here are just a few of our patients. Click on any of the images below to see it at a larger size.
The Truth About How Hard Your Kids' Teachers ACTUALLY Work
[A comment on this post to a conservative warmonger]:
Cindy Ladd, 18 years public school educator for elementary and high school. Quit teaching to become the office manager for Fortune 500 telecommunications company, then a digital training facility manager for U.S. Army Reserves. Attempted to return to public school teaching but after a couple of years I decided I no longer had the chops for it. Currently an entertainer.
Chicago’s right: How dare you compare a soldier to a teacher? I’ve worked closely with both for years, and soldiers are armed and trained for survival. Teachers are expected to deal with 30 to 35 students—some violent—while unguarded, unarmed, unsupported, and unprotected. I myself have been poisoned by a student, while a coworker was held hostage for a day along with her entire class of kids by an emotionally disturbed student with a bomb. No, we didn’t teach in the big city…we were in a rural area of central Florida. Lecanto, Florida to be specific, if you want to look it up.
Neither one of us is teaching anymore; I left after 18 years and was diagnosed with PTSD. I can only imagine the scars my fellow teacher still has from her experience. I still have nightmares on occasion of one crazy mother who stalked me and threatened to kill me, of her daughter who poisoned me, and of the principal who covered it (and the bomb-hostage situation) up for as long as he could for the sake of avoiding negative publicity.
So, yeah. After leaving public education and working for the U.S. Army and training soldiers, I can say with some confidence that there are some similarities and some differences between public educators and soldiers. Soldiers are allowed to defend themselves.
